BRATISLAVA, Slovakia — Slovakia now leads the world in COVID-19 deaths by size of population following a surge of a highly contagious coronavirus variant.

Despite a tough lockdown, the seven-day rolling average of daily COVID-19 fatalities in Slovakia has risen from 1.68 deaths per 100,000 people on Feb. 1 to 1.78 deaths per 100,000 people on Monday, according to Johns Hopkins University.

Portugal, which topped the global table for more than three weeks, dropped to second with 1.48 deaths per 100,000.

The Health Ministry says another 111 people died of COVID-19 on Monday for a total of 6,063 in the nation of 5.4 million.

Slovakian government authorities have said that the fast-spreading coronavirus variant of first identified in Britain has become the dominant in the country.